


What have I done?

by Anonymous



Category: The Uniques (Webcomic)
Genre: Corrupt treatement center, Innocent Doctor, It's the 60's in an insane asylum
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:35:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25792969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: A young psychiatric doctor walks into his first day at a facility which treats both 'regular' and Unique patients, believing that he is going to help them. Only to realise that, that is far from the truth and the true darkness of his job spreads far deeper than just the corridors halls.
Kudos: 3
Collections: The Uniques Contest 2020





	What have I done?

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING:  
> While there is no depictions of outwright sexual assault, there is a mention alluding to the assault of an unconcious minor.  
> I don't want to hurt anyone with this, so if this is the kind of stuff that bothers you then please DO NOT READ.

**1 st November 1960 **

_Eastern Pennsylvania State Institution for the Feeble-Minded and Epileptic, Pennsylvania_

As James had gotten ready for his first ever shift at the Institution he couldn’t help but feel a dull throb of excitement and nerves throughout his body. He couldn’t believe it; no really he couldn’t believe it! All the time and effort he’d spent working towards this had finally paid off and dressed in his brand new uniform he took his first steps in his career as a psychiatric doctor. A junior doctor of course, but still a doctor **and** he’d ended up at east pen’s state institution; needless to say James would be lying if he said he didn’t believe he was the luckiest man alive. Though many would disagree with him and wanted to stay as far away from the building as possible, happy to leave him to what they saw as his unfortunate fate. But what was so special about the treatment facility? Well, not only did it provide treatment for the run of the mill lunatics but it also had a facility which housed patients of the unique variety. Strange beings with even stranger abilities or appearances. Since he’d first heard of it in his early years of study James had wanted to work there, mesmerised by its groundbreaking treatments for Uniques and truly believing that they were doing something good for the world. Helping to treat and protect individuals who no one knew the full extent of their strengths yet. Fantastic!

With a quick breakfast and an even quicker drive, the young man eagerly pulled up into the gravel drive of the imposing and impressive campus. He was ready, he’d been ready for years and he couldn’t wait to provide help for his future patients, especially the Unique’s which is what he’d been specialising in and which his job revolved around. Arriving in the lobby and going through basic admin protocol it wasn’t long before a very dishevelled looking doctor came to greet him, introducing himself as his higher and beginning to take him on a tour of the facilities. First was the psychiatric facility, with its long, winding corridors of brick walls and concrete floors. It was unsettling clean, though the dim lighting, barred windows and metal doors some of which stood on rusted hinges, painted everything with a grimy filter. Not that James was perturbed; in fact he was impressed as he’d seen far worse and east pen was clearly one of the higher calibre ones. Of course there were also the patients, quiet ones, babbling ones, screaming ones, one which ran out into the corridor and was dragged back into their cell by guards, kicking and screaming. There was the recreational room, which currently sat empty aside from one silent, rocking old woman, the cafeteria which was beginning to fill up with patients arriving for their breakfast and daily medications, the infirmary and of course the operating rooms where necessary lobotomies and behavioural procedures were performed. Gruesome work, but James understood the need and benefits behind it. While torture a patient further when you could grant them the eternal bliss that came with a lobotomy or the electric chair? He truly was in awe throughout the tour, especially as it just proved to him further how much more advanced East Pen was in comparison to some of its other counterparts. But, despite his wide eyed admiration, he really didn’t have all that much interest in the mundane part of the hospital. No, he wanted to see the Uniques Ward and it was that ward which he was going to get.

The first thing that greeted them as they began to make their way towards the all important ward was the security systems in place. Key pads, locks, thick metal doors and bars and even guards with guns, something which James hadn’t seen in the first part of the tour. But, eventually those came to an end and it was only a matter of turning a corner which separated them from the Uniques. Now, James had never actually met a Unique or at least not to his own knowledge so he was antsy to finally get a look at the beings he’d studied for so long in his textbooks, the ones he’d heard about on the news, the ones who differed so much from those who had saved the world during the War. But, instead of continuing straight on with the tour his senior doctor paused and turned to him with a surprisingly grim look upon his sallow face “It’s not easy to get here so I’m guessing you’re not stupid, boy. These things are not your comic book heroes, they’re not your virtue, or mercury, or ambassador. They are not the same. They are dangerous. They should all be asleep right now so a newbie like you shouldn’t have too much trouble but if I tell you to do something, you do it. Got it?” taken aback but not extremely surprised James gave a stunned nod, swallowing hard as they began walking again and turned a corner.

Overall the corridors weren’t all that different from the Psychiatric Ward and if you didn’t spend too much time looking you wouldn’t notice anything. But, there were more sprinklers in the ceiling, and more drains in the floor and overall the air felt colder and more stale, not to mention the complete lack of windows to the outside. There were however windows looking into every single room, as well as a heavy metal door and each room was a bed, with a patient in it who was hooked up to a monitoring system and one or more drips. It was the appearance of the patients that got to James first. There was a girl covered in shining, almost glowing yellow scales, a man with five horns sprouting from his head, one with a lizard tail, and another with extra arms… They were breathtaking; James had only ever seen them from his clinical textbooks so to see them in real life was otherworldly. Seeing them contently asleep filled him with a sense of comfort, he was glad he was given the opportunity to help them, to teach them and to protect them. Of course, he’d already been aware of the truth behind the treatments the Uniques were provided with, far more so than the public was, but that was because the public wouldn’t understand what they were trying accomplishing. As they continued down the corridor a metal door opened and a guard stepped out, zipping up his pants zipper as he did and giving both James and his higher a wave in greeting before striding off as if nothing had happened. It was then that the young man began feeling a sense of confusion and unease, which only intensified as they passed by the window looking into the room which the guard had just exited. Inside was a boy with honey brown hair, asleep like an angel in the bed with rumpled sheets, which he clearly couldn’t have rumpled himself with how deep of an anaesthetic he was under. Looking down in the direction the guard had left and then back at the boy James sense of unease was replaced with a sick feeling. What had that man been _doing_? Looking to his higher for confirmation he was shocked to see that the older man didn’t seem fazed at all, in fact he looked just as bored as before and was contently continuing with the tour, beginning to leave James behind. “Who’s the kid?” he asked as he quickly caught up, hoping to maybe get a reaction from him. Instead, the doctor simply glanced back at the room which James was gesturing towards and shrugged “Jimmy, pretty sure he’s from Madison City.” The lack of a reaction or any indication that anything was wrong only causing James’s heart to sink and for him to reluctantly continue with the tour.

For a while everything remained relatively uneventful, all of the patients present were anesthetized so it wasn’t like anything dramatic was about to happen. Though James spent the entire time in a quiet funk, trying to process what he had just seen and the lack of reaction from anyone else. What was happening? Did his higher just not realise what the Guard had done? Was he jumping to conclusions? Or was this- **was this normal**? But, then they got to another part of the Uniques Ward and though he didn’t know it yet, the young man was in for an even worse revelation. Another reason for why he’d wanted to be placed at East Pen so bad was the new treatments and technologies which it had been known for using on its Uniques, revolutionising the treatment of such beings and opening the door for new treatments, aside from medical commas. It was this section of the ward, the part where new treatments were tested which they had arrived at and like before they were greeted with tedious amounts of security. Finally making it to the other side, James quickly began to wish that he had never entered as he was greeted by sounds far hideous and disturbing than those which had filled the normal Psychiatric Wards. Screams. Screams of agony. Screams of fear. Screams of anger. All he could hear were screams and he nearly ran back outside to the deafening silence of the sleeping corridors, only avoiding that option due to his higher asking “You good?” resulting in a guilty nod and a short “Yeah” from James as the tour continued. **HE** had trained for this. **HE** had wanted this. **HE** was ready for this. Why was **HE** so scared!

Most of the rooms that the screams were coming from you couldn’t see into, the only indications of what was going on being the horrifying noises that escaped from them. But, James could imagine what was going on underneath. Electroshock, acupuncture, lobotomy and more. “As you know, the government has been having us working on finding new treatments for Uniques. Anaesthesia is effective but it requires a lot of space, resources and time. The government wants to try and put some of these things to work, wants to try and harness them which is what this building is for. We test the limits and obedience of these things, teach them what they don’t know and train them so that the government can one day use them against the commies.” With his future mentors narration playing in the back of his mind, James followed him in a trance as they came up to the one room with a window, where three other doctors stood outside of in the corridor. Inside was a fire, or more accurately _a lot_ of fire. The whole room was filled with it and it was only after a minute of looking that James realised that there was an actual person inside, a girl, who was also coated in flames and who was banging on the glass as if trying to escape. She wasn’t screaming, thank god, but her eyes were wide with terror as she frantically banged on the glass while the fire seemed to spark and rise as if fuelled by her fear. The sight was enough to get James to race up to the glass, much to protest of his senior doctor. The sick feeling that had numbed with the shock which the testing facility had brought, returned with a vengeance as he stared into the terrified face of a girl who looked to be in her mid-teens, at least from what he could make out though the flames. She was scared. Why was she scared? Couldn’t they see she was scared? But, that wasn’t the worst of it. One of the three doctors that had been observing her seemed to mutter something incoherently and jets of water sprang from the ceiling, smothering the flames. For a moment James felt relief, good they’d realised how scared she was, they were stopping. But then the screaming started. Screams of pain, the kind you hear from burning buildings and people trapped in machinery. The kind a dying animal makes as its last moments are spent in complete agony. The girl had collapsed to the floor as she screamed, writhing as the water hit her and created smoke, her skin reddening, cracking and blistering as if she was being burned.

Not as if, she was being burned. The water was burning her! Staring in horror at the sight of the helpless girl, her howls filling his ears, James never heard a word about stopping from the other doctors instead all he heard was “Subject Ignis seems vulnerable to water and responds to it as if it were fire.” the voice cold, clinical and calm as it spoke. With the world feeling like it was ending, like he was about to be sick and like everything he had known wasn’t right all James could manage to think was, **was he supposed to do this too?**


End file.
